The Japanese geisha is an artist and entertainer, but the word does not mean just any artist or entertainer. The culture and profession of geisha is limited to a very strict and meticulous system developed over a couple of hundred years, in which geisha provided entertainment for parties and events for wealthy people who wanted to impress their guests. The misconception of geisha as sex workers came from the aftermath of World War II, when Western soldiers brought much-needed cash to Japan and sex workers passed themselves off as geisha to attract them. That doesn't mean that real geisha weren't mistreated or abused, and indeed they encountered plenty of sexual harassment. It also doesn't mean there weren't some geisha who used sex to enhance their status or enrich themselves, but it wasn't part of the system as intended.

Learning the profession of geisha takes years of strict education and training, which each woman is expected to pay for in full when she begins her career. Each step in the process has its own duties, curriculum, and expectations, as well as rules for her appearance. In the 19th century, families would sell their young daughters to a geisha house at around age six, and the geisha house would become their family as well as their employer. Now, becoming a geisha is voluntary, and training starts at age 15. But the draw is not what it used to be. There are only around a thousand trained geisha left in all of Japan today, where there were once tens of thousands. Read about the system of geisha and how it's changed at History Collection.  -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: OSU Special Collections and Archives)  

Superman is strong enough to squeeze coal into diamonds. Spider-Man can throw a handy web to swing from. The Invisible Woman has the power of... well, you know. These superpowers are just another day at work for some of nature's creatures. In another installment of his True Facts series, Ze Frank gives us the rundown on animals with the powers of transparency, constriction, and slime flinging. There are no spiders, because we know what they can do. We even named a comic book superhero after them. Flying isn't even considered a superpower among animals, since most insects and birds do it, and even some mammals. I guess you could say flying is downright pedestrian, but that would be a joke in itself. Still, there are limits and some drawbacks to each of these superpowers. There's a one-minute embedded ad at 3:45. Don't you just love it when a commercial is interrupted by another commercial?

When Chinese laborers built the transcontinental railway from the western side in the 19th century, they brought a traditional pain relief oil with them made from Chinese water snakes. Snake oil was an intriguing idea, and Clark Stanley saw an opportunity. He bottled his own snake oil liniment and sold it for decades. The medicine was eventually analyzed and found to consist of mineral oil, beef suet, red pepper, and turpentine. Not only was it ineffective, there were no snakes involved at all! That's how the term "snake oil" came to be used for anything fake or deceptive. For his deception, Stanley was fined $20.

There's also the story of the man who convinced people that rubbing expensive metal objects on their bodies would relieve pain, the woman who passed herself off as a princess of a fictional country, the doctor who sewed goat testicles into mens' scrotums, and other charlatans from history profiled in a list at Mental Floss.

Want to see how your Christmas tree started out in life? This guy who goes by Boxlapse at YouTube bought a pine cone at the supermarket last year and decided to grow a stone pine tree (Pinus pinea) in a pot. This video is a time-lapse that covers 300 days of his experiment. As you can see, it rather dramatically went from a pine cone to a recognizable tree in less than a year. I was expecting a slight touch of tinsel to be added at the end, but I guess that might limit the shelf life of the video. Add six more years to this story, and you'll have the cut trees that are being sold for Christmas decorations right now. He says he is continuing the experiment, so we may see further growth of this same tree next year. -via Digg

Theodore Gray has a new book out called Tools: A Visual Exploration of Implements and Devices in the Workshop, which is full of everything you need to know about tools. Gray made quite a splash over the last twenty years or so with his many iterations of the Periodic Table of Elements, so his publisher had the idea to make a periodic table of tools to accompany the book, with photographs by Nick Mann.

The Periodic Table of Tools in interactive form has its own website. You can see that the table is headed by hammers on one side and driver bits on the other. Click on any of the cells and pull up more examples and information on that tool. Rearrange the table by groups and see how each type of tool relates to other types of tools, although some allowances were made, like giving "toy tools" and "antique tools" their own cells in fairly random places. If you look at each photograph closely, you will find some surprises. The Periodic Table of Tools is available for sale as a 36" x 20" poster. It would look good in your workshop. -via Metafilter

For most Americans, Napoleon Bonaparte's dealings with the United States began in 1800 when he acquired the Louisiana territory from Spain, and then while depressed about the Haitian Revolution, turned around and sold it to the US for $15 million, or about three cents an acre, in 1803. It was a huge acquisition, but the only part the Spanish or the French really controlled was New Orleans, with the rest being Indian country.

Whichever country controlled New Orleans, it was filled with Napoleon fans. And as the French emperor went on to bigger battles in Europe, he retained the never ending loyalty of New Orleans residents. After Elba, after Waterloo, Napoleon considered returning to New Orleans for his retirement. His brother had already emigrated to America, and Napoleon confided in others that moving to the U.S. would bring him the dignity he deserved. In fact, he was trying to arrange his own passage to America when he was captured by the British and sent to St. Helena in 1815. Read about Napoleon's retirement plans, and the city that wanted him, at BBC Travel. -via Messy Nessy Chic

(Image credit: Infrogmation)

The video is just a few seconds long, but it contains multitudes. The little girl wants to pet the dog, but she can't because that's a bear! Her confusion may be funny, but I would have scooped the child up and had her in the door before she got the phrase out. Would it make you feel any better to know that the joke isn't real? The audio is from an earlier, unrelated TikTok video. That might make it less funny, but it's still dangerous to have a small child that close to a bear. Let's assume that the little girl was not eaten by the juvenile bear, and that she has learned to avoid such encounters in the future. The lesson is, don't believe everything you see on the internet, but there's nothing wrong in enjoying the funny fakes. Therefore, let the musical remixes commence!



The newest is from pianist Brandon Ethridge. -via Boing Boing

Perhaps you've heard the story of how the Teddy bear came about. The bear was inspired by a 1902 incident in which President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a young bear that had been trapped for the occasion, which was illustrated in cartoon form for the newspapers. Candy store owner Morris Michtom asked his wife Rose to make a toy bear and they named it Teddy, after Roosevelt, and they sold like hotcakes.    

But there was some objections to the popularity of Teddy bears as a children's toy. Apparently stuffed toy animals weren't all that popular before the Teddy bear debuted, and some social commentators thought they would spell the end of American life as we knew it. Why? If little girls started playing with plush animals instead of baby dolls, they might reject babies and never have children! Luckily, we figured out that toys are more than just career-training aids. Read about the Teddy bear's rise to fame and the backlash it engendered at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History)

Way before electricity, city officials saw the benefit to lighting up the street so that people could find their way around. When electricity was in its infancy, some towns took the easy way- instead of replacing hundreds of gas lamps, why not just built one tower, or several for bigger cities, and make them very tall? Electricity produced enough light for people to get around, even from a very tall tower. As far as the electrical mechanism goes, they were primitive, but they worked. Eventually, cheaper, safer, and more efficient electric streetlights were developed, and these "moonlight towers" were replaced. Except in Austin, Texas. Austin decided to keep the towers as part of the city's personality, although they have been restored and rebuilt. The city still has 29 of their original 31 towers. Tom Scott gives us a rundown on the towers, how they worked, and what they look like today. 

The UK Biobank study is a long-running study of 467,354 people in the United Kingdom who have been documenting their eating habits, among other data, since 2006. A new study took data from that large population and studied those who changed their eating habits at different ages, particularly those who switched from processed foods to a healthier, more natural diet.

The results showed that people who switched from unhealthy eating habits to healthier regimens added up to ten years to their lives. Those who had average diets to begin with showed gains as well, although they were lesser because those people were healthier to begin with. The age at which one began eating a healthy diet made a difference, but even people who began eating better in their seventies showed longevity gains of four to five years.

The healthy diet is described as one without sugary drinks and processed meats, and "rich in whole grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and moderate amounts of fish." Read more about this study and the results at ScienceAlert. -via Real Clear Science 

(Image: www.Pixel.la Free Stock Photos) 

Twin brothers Pat and Sean Kelly are musicians and DJs for private events in Philadelphia. When you mix music on the fly, you get a feeling for what works together, and an awful lot of songs work together. You know sometimes you get a song stuck in your head, and it reminds you of another song that uses the same chord progression, and then that song is stuck in there as well. Take this to the limit and you've got magic, especially if you've got a brother to sing with. They call this medley "My Brain at 3:59am – A Mashup." Twenty songs in one minute, divided by two singers, means each song gets about six seconds, but that's long enough for you to know what song it is, and now you've got an entire mashup stuck in your head. If you hear any songs you don't know, there's a list of them at Boing Boing.   

Futility Closet tells the true tale of four men who went adrift in the Pacific for 49 days in 1960. Soviet barge T-36 originated in the Kuril Archipelago on the eastern end of the USSR. When a hurricane hit, the barge battled to avoid being thrown up on land. After the eye of the storm passed, the barge crew battled against being blown out to sea, and ran out of fuel doing so. The radio was ruined. A search was launched, but when some debris from the barge was found, Soviet officials declared the barge and crew had sunk.

The four sailors, ages 20-22, had a three-day supply of food and hardly any fresh water, so they were reduced to drinking the rusty water used for engine cooling and eating leather. They were picked up 49 days later by the US aircraft carrier Kearsarge, which was traveling from Japan to San Francisco. If this story intrigues you, you can read an expanded version with photographs at Wikipedia. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: USS Kearsarge crew)

While Boston Dynamics keeps working on Atlas, their humanoid robot, and Spot, the quadruped that actually does real world jobs, Disney is concentrating on building robots for their entertainment value. Does it surprise anyone that they are the ones giving us real life droids? A few weeks ago, they took their new droids out for a test run at the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge theme park at Disneyland in California. These bipedal self-learning robots don't look all that useful for the real world, but they are impossibly adorable and are ready to show off their personalities, which is perfect for the immersive fantasy of Disneyland. They look like a cross between an AT-ST and Wall-E. See what else they can do.



Look for the souvenir toy version coming back from the theme parks soon, and in stores by next Christmas. Disney is also working on non-Star Wars free-roaming characters with soft, expressive faces for their other theme parks. -via Metafilter

On Star Trek: The Original Series, "fascinating" is a word Mr. Spock used when confronted by something unexpected. How often did that happen in the series? More than once an episode, at least. Merriam-Webster defines the word fascinating as "extremely interesting or charming, captivating." I doubt Spock would use it to mean charming, but since the character is supposedly immune to human emotions (which wasn't quite true), we will assume he finds all things extremely interesting.  

Here we have incidents that Spock found fascinating from all three seasons of the original Star Trek series, plus Star Trek: The Animated Series, the Star Trek movies, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. The use of the word is not confined to Spock, because others picked up the habit from him, too. This is another Trek supercut from John DiMarco. See some others in our previous posts. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Louis Sherry owned one of the finest restaurant in New York City during the Gilded Age, when Sherry's would compete with Delmonico's across the street to impress millionaires and others of the city's upper crust. Sometimes this involved stunts that would make the newspapers as well as the gossip circuit. None was more spectacular than the time Sherry served a dinner party on horseback. In his grand white ballroom, on the second floor. A classic tale of conspicuous consumption. 

In 1903, millionaire C.K.G. Billings, a horse racing enthusiast, built an elegant new stable and wanted to celebrate its grand opening with his closest friends. Thirty-six guests, all men, showed up in formalwear at Sherry's on the appointed night, and were led to the ballroom, which contained 36 horses! Each horse was outfitted with a silver tray attached to the saddle as a dining table for each guest, with champagne in the saddle bags. The dinner included caviar, turtle soup, rack of lamb, and flaming peaches. The horses must have stayed calm during the serving of the flaming peaches, because no mention of panic made it into the papers, although the term "freak dinners" was used. Read about the banquet on horseback at The Bowery Boys. -via Strange Company